A game known for its remarkable visuals and competitive atmosphere, Apex Legends has become one of the world's largest battle royals on the market. But is it possible to turn these visuals into a competitive edge for you and your team? Over the course of this article, I will be helping you with the Top 15 settings that can help improve your visual performance and guide you towards becoming an Apex Legend.
15-Sprint View Shake
Sprint View Shake has always been considered more of an immersive setting than something giving you a competitive edge. What Sprint Shake does is mimic the view and head movement as if you were actually running. While it is a way to feel more invested in the game, the excessive screen movement can cause difficulty aiming.
If you are looking for a way to help not only your vision but your aiming as well, setting this to minimal will accomplish both.
Recommended: Minimal
14-Prompt Style
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Compact prompt style will reduce the display of guns, shields, and loot to give you better awareness of your surroundings.
Changing your Prompt Style is another way you can increase your visibility. Prompt Style is the way one sees items inside of Apex. If you are a beginner, I would recommend leaving this on default while you learn the ropes. If you aren't, then why haven't you set this to compact yet?
Having this set to compact will reduce the amount of space taken up on screen. This reduction gives you a chance to get a better observation of your surroundings while moving around and looting.
Recommended: Compact
13-Effect Details
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Effect Detail having a minimal effect on a theremite and its definition even at the lowest setting.
The Effect Details setting is what controls the visual effects of explosions or in-game abilities. Fortunately for us, in Apex, the difference is almost unrecognizable. Yes, having this set to High will make the thermite have more detail, but really how often are you looking for that?
Here is the thing, changing this won’t improve FPS by a whole lot, but you also won't notice a difference in graphics if you do. If you really are looking for the greatest number of frames with the least amount of loss in visuals, then this is a setting that can help you get there.
Recommended: Medium
12-Ragdolls
For those of you who’ve seen this but don’t know what it means or even what it does, let me give you an example. Grab a stuffed doll and throw it across the room. That is all this setting is made for, to increase the arm flailing, body flying, “bro did you see that!'' moments during the game. While this may be visually amusing, it doesn’t offer any true benefits in terms of visibility.
Having this set lower will reduce the time bodies are visible in the game, giving you less screen clutter. Additionally, it will decrease the load on your computer, giving you access to more frames.
Recommended: Low
11-Reticle Color
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Apex provides players with multiple Color options for sights, each providing better visibility while aiming.
Reticle Color is a cool feature they added not too long ago. This was something many professional and casual fans asked for, but some may not have seen the benefit it can add. A customizable reticle color is more than just a way to show who you are; it can be used to give you a competitive edge in sight.
“But Brandon, how does reticle color improve my vision?” Think of it this way: You drop a green M&M in the grass, how long until you find it? Now do the same thing but drop a blue one and see it stick out like a sore thumb. The same goes for your reticle. Having one that blends into the background will naturally make it harder to aim. This is more of a personalized setting, but Apex has a fully customizable slider, so see what fits you.
Recommended: Pink
10-Impact Marks
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Looking at the rock, you can see how many bullet holes are left in your surroundings, making your PC work harder.
Impact marks, not to be confused with hit markers, are the bullet holes left on your surroundings after a gunfight. What purpose do these marks serve you in terms of visibility? None. At all. They are actually a reason why you might be getting lower FPS than desired.
If you are looking to improve frames and, in doing so, raise your visibility, then this is a setting you need to change. By setting this to low, you remove unnecessary load on your GPU, which will improve graphic performance.
Recommended: Low
9-Model Details
Once again, this is a setting that comes down to improved performance or improved graphics. Model Detail is a way to change how many details are in objects. Don’t worry though, because setting this to low won’t make you see stick figures. You will see slight differences between Low, Medium, and High, but you’ll also see a difference in your FPS.
While this isn’t a game changing setting, giving you massive gains in your frames, every bit helps when trying to have an edge. To me, since the gains are minimal, I like to set it in the middle, but if you prefer High, it won’t kill you.
Recommended: Medium
8-Dynamic Spot Shadows
Dynamic Spot Shadows are the shadows you’ll see from moving legends or vehicles in Apex Legends. The upside to Dynamic Shadows is that this is a setting which can help you when enabled without reducing the performance of your system.
Surprisingly, I actually encourage turning this on because it provides you with a visual boost over the competition. A highly underused strategy is using shadows to see where other players are by their shadows before they see you. Plus, having it on doesn’t hurt your FPS.
Recommended: Enabled
7-Volumetric Lighting
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Prime example of Volumetric Light, God rays, and just how blinding it can be to someone trying to fight.
More commonly referred to as God rays, Volumetric Lighting is the effect of beams of light in a game. Once again, this is just another setting to make your game more immersive. Even though it may add more detail to the game, Volumetric Lighting offers more negatives than positives.
If we were to run a game with it on, the first thing we would notice is a decrease in FPS. Not only would we see a drop in frames, but the light beams would make it more difficult to spot other legends. Just like in real life, the light from the sun can be blinding, but unlike in real life, we have the choice to turn it off.
Recommended: Disabled
6-V-Sync
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Located under the Video tab in the settings, we are given a few options to set V-Sync, we went with disabled.
Vertical Sync, or V-Sync for short, was a way to improve your gameplay by locking your frame rates. This locking of frame rates is actually what causes this to be an issue. To most, having your FPS set seems like it’ll help with frame rates dropping. The reality is it doesn’t keep it from dropping, rather it keeps your frames from outperforming your monitor.
The key negative effect of this is the creation of input lag due to the fact that your GPU is in essence frozen until your monitor is ready for more information. If you're looking to improve your game visibility, this is a setting you should turn off.
Recommended: Disabled
5-Texture Filtering
The purpose behind Texture Filtering is to improve the overall sharpness and visibility of images on screen. Texture Filter is another setting which doesn’t have much of a decrease in FPS like some other setting. Naturally, the lowest setting of Bilinear to its highest of 16x Anisotropic is the greatest difference, but even that is negligible.
Depending on the hardware inside your computer, it may have a different outcome, but I find most people can handle between 4x to 8x comfortably. If you really need every frame, you can set it to 2x or even Bilinear. Texture Filtering doesn’t decrease visual performance much, so this really comes down to what you need.
Recommended: 8x
4-Texture Streaming Budget
Not to be confused with Texture Filtering, as we just discussed, Streaming Budget is the amount of memory dedicated to the rendering of graphics. The most important thing to know is to not set it above the memory of the GPU. Setting it higher than your GPU may cause lag in your game.
While the biggest difference between these settings is from None to 2GB, there is a slight improvement with each one. To optimize your gameplay, it is suggested to set it to at least 2GB or match it with your GPU.
Recommended: 4GB
3-Adaptive Resolution FPS Target
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The Adaptive Resolution FPS Target setting is given a slider for you to set your desired frame rate.
Adaptive Resolution FPS seems more ideal than what it really is. The concept of setting your FPS and having your PC adjust throughout the game to not drop frames is appealing. The reality is that this will make your graphics worse in less than ideal moments.
Most understand that frames change throughout the course of a game. The middle of a gun fight with lots of explosives is going to experience fewer frames than sitting in a building. But in both moments, your graphics are the same. With Adaptive Resolution, you’ll keep your frame but you sacrifice the visual quality when you need it the most.
Recommended: 0
2-Ambient Occlusion
Ambient Occlusion can be explained as the shadows you see in the corners of rooms. Now it’s not as creepy as it sounds. What this setting does is make it so the shadows are detailed and defined. So, while it will make your game look better, it won’t help you with visibility and has been found to be the largest stressor on your PC.
Ever see those clips where they hide in a corner and the enemy runs back and forth without noticing them? They probably had their Ambient Occlusion set too high. Disabling this will allow you to spot enemies trying to use shadows as cover, all while offering a HUGE boost to FPS.
Recommended: Disabled
1-Field-Of-View (FOV)
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The Field-Of-View slider has a wide range in which one can set it to, but it mostly depends on personal preference and system capabilities.
Possibly one of the quickest and greatest ways to increase visibility is to increase what you can see in general. Field-Of-View does exactly this by widening the angle of your character's eyesight. This increase in FOV allows players the ability to see things sooner than someone with FOV at a lower setting.
You know those times where you get shot and it seems like the other player saw “around the corner”. Chances are that it was an increase in his Field-Of-View that allowed him to spot you first. Now this isn't the end all be all, you must consider your PC and what it can handle.
Brandon is a lone survivor of the Florida Wasteland, his journey has led him here, to The Grid. Learning along the way, a pen wields no strength unless the hand that holds it has courage.
